Babaeko Moves AFRIFF Audience To Tears, Offers Child Actor Full University Scholarship

Steve Babaeko’s deeply personal short film _Ramat_ had its African premiere at AFRIFF on Thursday, 5 November 2026, to a full house and sustained applause.

The 8-minute film revisits the morning of 13 February 1976, when Babaeko, then a young boy, watched his father — a serving Nigerian Army officer — weep for the first and only time after news broke of the assassination of General Murtala Ramat Muhammed.

Speaking before the screening, Babaeko admitted the film terrified him.

“I have been on location for hundreds of commercials. I know what a set feels like. And yet making this film scared me. Because this is not a client’s story. It is mine. Like every major achievement in my life, I did it scared.”

The emotional high point came after the screening, when Babaeko announced that the Steve Babaeko Foundation will fund the full university education of the film’s child star, Samuel Adebola.

“Samuel plays the boy in this film. The small boy watching his father cry for the first time. He found something in that role that I had not seen on a face since I was that boy myself. If this film is about anything, it is about what we pass on.”

Ramat_ was officially selected by AFRIFF from hundreds of submissions for its 15th edition. It is Babaeko’s first personal directorial work.

The Group CEO of X3M Ideas — the agency behind Nigeria’s first Cannes Lion in 2023 — will now take _Ramat_ to Clermont-Ferrand, Berlinale Shorts, Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and Brussels Short Film Festival, as part of its push for Oscar and BAFTA qualification.